When asked if the Beatles’ minds were as altered as it feels by viewers watching “Magical Mystery Tour,” Ringo demures: “Well it does look psychedelic,” he explains. “I didn’t photograph all of it,” Ringo admits of “Magical Mystery Tour.” “But I had all the crazy lenses, all the prism lenses, and I was making slides. In one scene in this largely improvised mind trip, filmed outside Ringo’s country house in Weybridge, U.K., Ringo projects slide images on George Harrison’s face, with the band’s “Blue Jay Way” playing on the soundtrack. What a lot of people might not know is that Ringo is the credited director of photography on the project, possibly the most amped-up, hallucinatory longform video ever produced in the guise of a movie. “By then we participated in some sort of mind medication and color was important.” “It didn’t do very well in England because the first time the BBC showed it, they showed it in black and white,” explains Ringo. “Magical Mystery Tour” was filmed as a TV special but was largely panned upon its initial airing the day after Christmas in 1967. And when that flows it flows into all their mediums. Observes director David Lynch: “The Beatles had that creativity flowing big time. I was surreptitiously filming people.”Īfter the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein died in 1967, the Beatles began to initiate their own projects, such as “Magical Mystery Tour,” a loose concept dreamed up by Paul McCartney and more or less inspired by Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters and their psychedelic road trip on a magic bus called “Further.” “Paul was the instigator of many of the things the Beatles did because he is a workaholic,” explains Ringo. I realized, let’s say 10 years ago, I slowed down because I was never at the party. I was always videoing, with our the family get-togethers I was taking shots of the babies, you know, the children growing up. And he was good in front of the camera and good behind the camera.”Īdds Ringo: “I just like to take pictures. He had a knowledge of cameras and an interest in filming. Ringo loved cameras and was taking photographs quite seriously from the end of 1963. “And when the Beatles began to earn serious money, they would buy themselves - or indeed be given, because that’s the prviledge of being very famous - things. “Ringo was always into gadgets,” says Mark Lewisohn, author of “Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years,” the first of three volumes planned on the lives of the Fab Four. This is a must-see for spaghetti western fans, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys movies that are somewhat off-beat, and very well made.Ringo experienced a natural predeliction for the visual medium, and as his recent limited-edition book, “Photograph” attests, Ringo took to photography early on. Fans of both genres should be especially pleased with this film. Besides being a spaghetti western, this film also borrows some elements from exploitation movies, (lots of scantily clad and naked women, women behind bars, etc.) but manages to do it without sacrificing the quality of the movie. The music score is excellent -a great classic spaghetti western sound with a little bit of sitar thrown in. The movie really stretches ones suspension of disbelief when the blind man is able to ride a horse to Mexico, and when he exhibits his uncanny ability to aim a gun, but this is such a high-quality film that it manages to pull it off with ease. He has a lot of great lines in this movie too. He really takes a beating, but always returns to create Hell on Earth for his enemies. His character in this film is one tough hombre. He belongs right up there with Nero, Gemma, Eastwood, and Milian (no one comes close to Lee Van Cleef). After seeing this film, I am convinced that Tony Anthony deserves more recognition as a spaghetti western star than he has gotten. This is the second Anthony spaghetti western that I have seen, and the other one (A Dollar Between the Teeth) is incredible also. I would recommend this movie to anyone, not just spaghetti western fans. This is one of those movies that is just plain great.
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